Re: [RFC PATCH 3/3 v2] perf: Update perf tool to monitor uncore events

[Lin Ming <ming.m.lin@intel.com>]

On Sun, 2010-11-21 at 20:22 +0800, Stephane Eranian wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>              samples  pcnt function               DSO
> >>              _______ _____ ______________________
> >> ____________________________________
> >>
> >>                 8.00 18.6% kallsyms_expand_symbol [kernel.kallsyms]
> >
> > Reporting a symbol for an uncore event seems highly misleading.
> > After all the uncore counter has no idea for which core the event was,
> > so there isn't really any instruction pointer to report.
> > The event could be event caused by a PCI device or similar.
> >
> > For per function monitoring of uncore events one has to use
> > OFFCORE_RESPONSE, like I implemented recently.
> >
> > I would suggest to not report any symbol names for uncore events.
> > Doing so just will confuse users.
> >
> > In fact I suspect uncore events are only really useful
> > with "stat", but not with "top", or if they are used in top
> > then the symbol reporting should be disabled.
> >
> I agree, uncore should only be used for counting on a
> per-cpu basis. You can leave the perf tool as is, but
> that opens up the risk of misinterpretation by many users,
> or you restrict this in the tool directly which is the better
> solution in my mind.

I agree restricting the tool is a better idea.
How about below?

#one cpu stat is allowed
perf stat -e ruNNNN -C <cpu>
perf stat -e ruNNNN -C <cpu> -p <pid>
perf stat -e ruNNNN -C <cpu> -- <command>

#per thread is NOT allowed
perf stat -e ruNNNN -p <pid>
perf stat -e ruNNNN -- <command>

#all cpus stat is NOT allowed, because it will mess the results
perf stat -e ruNNNN -a